So yesterday I decided to try G’ma Kay’s recipe for fudge and promptly wandered into Sitcomland. I had no problem blending the cocoa, sugar, milk, and corn syrup, but the snags came fast and furious once I reached the cooking stage. I alternated between having the gas turned too high, which would cause the syrup to overboil and get all over the pot’s sides and the stovetop, and too low, which meant that I was breathing gas until I noticed the flame had gone out. Eventually it looked like the mix had reached the soft ball stage*, so I took it off the stove, let it cool, and then stirred until, as G’ma phrased it in her e-mail, my arm fell off. I was a bit worried that it didn’t appear to be “setting” (i.e. turning thicker and paler until it looked more like batter than syrup) but eventually I decided it was as thick as it was going to get and poured it into a buttered pan to cool.

Which meant that this morning I woke up to a pan full of fudge sauce.

The punchline is that when I went on-line to search for fudge rescue techniques, I learned that if one makes fudge when it’s too humid it may fail to set. And of course, here in NYC, it was absolutely pissing out all day.

*thud*

So now I’m reboiling the fudge in the hope that it’ll remove enough moisture to let it set.

*Which means that a spoonfull dropped into a cup of water forms a ball instead of dissolving. It has nothing to do with sports.